Tim Bradford - Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?

Meanwhile the crowd were going completely mental – grown men were jumping up and down like kids and clapping their hands with glee. Then I realised I was doing it too – jumping up and down from foot to foot, clapping my hands together and shouting ‘Whhhooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!’ at the top of my voice. When the fight finally petered out it was the end of the third quarter and the crowd gave both teams a standing ovation – the Irish walked off the pitch in a tight little huddle and I could imagine them shouting ‘Join on the gang’ or ‘Does anybody want to play aaarrmmmyyy? No girls – only boys.’ Whatever else happened in the game, this was guaranteed to put bums on seats for the next encounter a week later. Very clever.

The Irish have a reputation for fighting. They even go on about it themselves. In America too, they’re called the ‘fighting Irish’. But they certainly don’t seem to fight any more than the English. In fact, blokes out and about drinking in the centre of towns seem a lot less aggressive. Whatever, the Australians would treat them with respect now, said the bloke standing next to me. They perhaps see the Irish as a sort of madder version of themselves, the pure source of the idiosyncratic Aussie spark, and they’d be united in their hatred of whingeing Pommie bastards. But it seemed to me that the fight was not a sign of mutual respect but a deliberate tactic to throw the Irish out of rhythm. They may have won the scrap but would they win the match?

In the fourth quarter a man in luminous lime green overalls ran onto the pitch at various intervals. At first I wasn’t sure if everyone else could see him. Could it be the drink? I discussed it with a few other fans and we decided he was the team gossip because he kept running over to players and chatting to them. He fancies your wife. Did you see Eastenders? Your investment portfolio is doing well, etc. An on-pitch information service, perhaps?

The urchin gurrier choir, quiet for a while, opened up in full voice once more, with an old battle ballad.

‘Aussie Aussie bastards,’ they sang. ‘Aussie Aussie bastards.’ Then the Kylie Minogue song, ‘I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, I should be so lucky in love.’

A bit of Rolf Harris: ‘Tie me kangaroo down, sport, tie me kangaroo down.’

‘Come on Australia,’ said the bravest of the two Antipodeans nearby.

‘Stick it up your arse, you fat Aussie bastard!’ sang the choirboys. ‘You fat bastard, you fat bastard! Youse is all a load of women!’

There was a big countdown by the crowd, then the hooter went for the end of the game. The final score was 62–61 to Australia. The winners were delighted, leaping around and hugging each other. It had been a terrific, hard-fought match, sporting heaven for those who like blood, guts and a lot of skill.

Then one of the little Hill 16ers began a solo refrain – ‘You’ll never beat the Irish, You’ll never beat the Irish – except,’ he went on, deadpan, ‘maybe at soccer, rugby, snooker, cricket, darts, Compromise Rules …’ His mates fell about laughing.

1Called ‘Reflings’.

I’m trying to get to sleep in O’Shea’s Hotel, between O’Connell Street and the railway station, while downstairs in the ‘24-hour bar’ a dreadful singer/accordion player is murdering a few classic tunes and I’m praying that he’ll shut up soon. No such luck – ‘Rivahhhssss roon freeeeeeeeehhhhhhrrr’, ‘Dirrdi ooooooohl taaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhn’, ‘Fffffeeeeeeellllzzzzz ovathenraaaiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ etc., etc., come piling one on top of the other. I’d popped in earlier for a quick half. 1 There were a mixture of local people with cold, pinched faces and skint and harassed looking tourists sitting around fondling their itchsome facial hair, their tongues lolling into fizzy yellow pints of lager. Next to me were some lively ‘Europeans’, who seemed to know all the words to all the songs. Their leader, a Eurotourist archetype, was a big-boned man with non-designer stubble, in a Luftwaffe-issue lumberjack shirt and a post-post-post punk hairdo – bald at the front, brown and greasy at the back. He seemed extremely upset by the plight of most of the protagonists of the songs – his face was one of absolute concentration and conviction as he listened to the music. I decided he was called Klaus, even if Greek. The Erinese, the brandy-buttered maudlin sentimentality of it all was too much for me after half an hour or so. It reminded me of a Paddy’s Day in London a few years back, red-faced folk with tears in their eyes bawling out songs – this was Dublin for Christsakes, what had they got to be nostalgic about? I got up to leave and, after a few whispers and hand signals, one of the Eurogroup parked their big, denimed backside in my seat.

‘Noit?’ said the pretty dark-eyed receptionist, meaningfully, as I headed for the stairs.

Back up in my rooms I turned the light out and tried to get some sleep, but the singer seemed to have taken my disappearance as an affront and belted it out louder:

Singer: Let’s put the speakers up in the corridor outside the miserable git’s room, hey ladies and gentlemen?

Klaus the Possibly Greek Eurotourist: Ha ha, yesss, zat iss good johke! ‘Ze Vild Rover’, jah?

I flicked the TV on – the film When Saturday Comes , 2 starring Sean Bean and Emily Lloyd, was showing. In many respects the singer downstairs was a lot more entertaining than this terrible piece of British cinema.

‘Begorrah Jimmy,’ said Emily Lloyd’s character in a really crap Dublin accent and I just burst out laughing, though they were nearly tears. I wished I was more drunk, then it might seem more entertaining. By the end I realised I am perhaps unique in the world, having now seen the film twice.

I don’t know what happened to Emily Lloyd. She seemed to sort of disappear after being superb as the young girl in Wish You Were Here . Sean Bean was eerily watchable, though. He’s like one of the sleazy blokes who’d stand on the back of dodgems when you were a kid, never smiling, catching girls’ eyes. Perhaps one of his family was a horse person. The balladeer downstairs seemed to have turned it up another notch with Wild Rover (annoyspentarlmaemoo-niaaaahhwehssskkeeeeeunbbbbbeeeeeeeehhhhhhrrr), with the audience joining in now.

Klaus: Und itz no nay never vill I plahh ze vild rover jah?

Finally, as the music fades and the punters wander off to their beds, I drift off to sleep, day-dreaming of the pretty dark-eyed receptionist wearing a bikini made out of an Irish flag, singing the ‘Fields of Athenry’ to me while doing the back stroke in a gigantic pint of yellow lager, while Klaus is chained to some rocks below the surface (‘Help achtung, Englander, I cannot breathe … arrrrggghhhh … blob-babubblblblblbbl’).

I wake up feeling good. I immediately try to plug my laptop into the phone lines. No chance. I don’t really want a newspaper but it seems like too much hard work not to get one. But what if something incredible has happened overnight, like God has proven that He exists, or there’s been a General Election on the quiet? I hate newspapers for the way they play on your emotions like this. Make you scared to miss out.

Outside it’s a typical summer’s day. Cold and windy with a promise of rain. Across the street an old man stands in a doorway, with an old black beret on, watching. He has a long nose and ears that drop down to his elbows. He’s got a proud look in his eye. I imagine that he’s been a ferocious Republican warrior in his life. I walk down the street and suck in the damp air. Saturday morning. The most perfect feeling. Kids in last season’s Man United shirts are playing with a half-inflated football in the street, bouncing the ball against the wall of a kebab shop. They never stop playing, even when someone walks past. Sometimes people get the ball blasted in their ears, and the lads are all apologetic. They stop occasionally, such as when a car turns into the street.